How Much Does an AI Consultant Cost in 2026?

Why the prices you see make no sense next to each other

Search for AI consultant pricing and you will find hourly rates, monthly retainers, “AI readiness assessments” and six-figure transformation programs, often for what sounds like the same thing. They aren’t the same thing. Most offers fall into one of three kinds:

• Advice. You get a recommendation, a roadmap or a deck. Useful if you have a team to carry it out. Expensive if you don’t, because nothing changes on Monday.
• Hours. You buy time and direct it. Fine when you know exactly what you want built. Risky when you don’t, because the meter runs while you figure it out.
• A working result. A configured setup, a workflow that runs, a piece of software people use. This is what I sell, so I am biased, but it is also the easiest to judge: it works or it doesn’t.

I spent nine years on the buying side of this as head of global marketing for three coworking franchise brands. The vendors I rehired were the ones who left something running. That is how I price now.

$350: the AI Power Session

Seventy-five to ninety minutes, working on your actual setup, usually screen-shared. We look at the AI tools and subscriptions you already pay for, pick the two or three jobs where AI will save you real time, decide what ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini should each do, and configure them while we’re talking: projects, custom instructions, the files the tools should be able to read.

You leave with a working setup and a short, prioritized list of what to do next. Some people never need anything else. Others use the session to find out whether the bigger thing they’re considering is worth building.

It is the right buy if you’re a founder or owner-operator using AI in a scattered way and suspect you’re getting a fraction of what you pay for. It isn’t a build. Nothing gets connected to your CRM in ninety minutes.

Related: an AI Workstation Setup (from $595) does the same thing for a whole new Mac or PC, including coding agents and a deploy environment if you build software. It is setup for how you work, not IT support.

From $2,500: one workflow, built and handed over

An AI Business Sprint takes one workflow with a clear payoff and makes it run. Examples I get asked for most:

• A new lead fills in a form, the lead lands in the CRM with the right owner, AI drafts a reply using your real pricing and availability, and a person approves it before it goes out.
• A weekly report that pulls enquiries, bookings and stalled deals into one page instead of three exports.
• Research that used to take an afternoon per prospect, done in a consistent format with sources attached.

The price covers designing it around how your team works, building it, testing it on real examples (not demo data), writing down how it works, and handing it over. What pushes the price above the starting point: the number of systems it has to connect, how messy the data in them is, and how many approval steps the business needs.

The thing to insist on, from me or anyone: a fixed scope and a fixed price before work starts, and a handover your team can actually follow.

From $5,000: custom AI software

Custom software makes sense when the job is core to how you make money and off-the-shelf tools force a workaround every day. Three I built show the range:

• qali.ai answers the phone on the first ring, works out what the caller needs, qualifies them and books them in, with an approved-answer library so it never improvises on price or policy.
• StormSnap is a phone app for stormwater inspections on construction sites: photo evidence, BMP checklists and SWPPP reports generated from the inspection itself.
• Prospector tells a coworking sales team which companies in their market to call first, with the source behind every reason.

What drives the cost of a build: how many kinds of users it has, what it has to integrate with, whether it handles payments or regulated data, and how polished the first version needs to be. Running costs are separate and real: hosting, AI model usage (billed by the provider based on how much it’s used) and maintenance. I estimate those before we build, because a cheap build with an expensive monthly bill is not cheap.

Workshops and ongoing help

A Team AI Workshop (half day from $1,500, full day from $2,500) is built on your team’s own files and jobs, so people practice on work they do every week. AI Concierge (from $1,500 a month) is ongoing, done-with-you improvement: usually two working sessions a month plus limited support in between.

How not to waste money on AI consulting

1. Start with the smallest thing that proves value. A working session or a single workflow tells you more than a roadmap does.
2. Ask what exists at the end. If the answer is “recommendations,” make sure someone is paid to carry them out.
3. Get a fixed price for a defined scope. Open-ended hours suit the seller more than the buyer.
4. Insist on handover. Documentation, logins in your name, and someone on your team who has run it at least once.
5. Be suspicious of guaranteed results. Nobody honest can promise a percentage before seeing your data.

When you don’t need an AI consultant at all

If you already use one AI tool every day for clear jobs, your team is comfortable with it, and nothing in the business is waiting on a missing system, keep going. Come back when there is a specific job that’s eating hours or losing leads. That is when paying someone pays off.